We left for China on Thursday afternoon, flying on Air China from JFK to Beijing. The flight itself was fine, with minimal turbulence, but the amenities on the plane were lacking (no personal tvs and bad movies at random intervals on grainy projection screens). The food was pretty decent though, as far as coach airplane food goes. Nothing spectacular by any means, but definitely edible and relatively flavorful. We ended up having two meals on the way over, dinner and lunch, and while the entrees changed, the sides did not. Both times we were given a tuna salad and a roll on the side, and a pre-packaged mango shortcake for dessert. I had chicken and rice first, which came in a nice black bean sauce.
Chicken in black bean sauce with rice, tuna salad, bread, and mango shortcake
Josh had beef and rice, with chewy beef and blandly steamed broccoli and carrots.
Beef with rice, broccoli, and carrots
For my second meal, I had seafood noodles. The noodles were pretty limp but still had some chewiness to them, and the four accompanying shrimp were fairly edible.
Seafood noodles with shrimp
I don’t remember what Josh had. Pork maybe? It was in a gloppy brown sauce with more bland broccoli. Meh.
Possibly pork with rice and broccoli
We landed in Beijing in the early evening but by the time we got through immigration, got our bags, met up with members of our tour group, and took the hour bus ride from the airport to the city, it was pretty late. We were still hungry though so we ventured out of our hotel, the New Otani, and went in search for food. We wound up at a restaurant on the street behind the hotel that seemed to be the most crowded. The restaurant’s specialty appeared to be seafood (like whole fish in a spicy chili broth), but none of us were in the mood for fish so we ended up picking mostly familiar dishes and a few fun snacks.
The name of the restaurant on the menu
We started out with some beer, of course, one that was local to Beijing. It was pretty light and fairly tasteless, but refreshing enough.
Yanjing beer
Our first dish was sweet and sour deep fried crullers (yeo tiao, or “oil sticks”). These crullers are popular in Taiwan wrapped in sesame pancake and dunked into bowls of hot soy milk, so I was intrigued to see them served in a different way. The sticky sweet and sour sauce was more sweet than sour, and had a subtle maple flavor to it. It went well with the crunchy pieces of cruller. I actually liked this dish a lot, even though I originally thought it would be weird.
Sweet and sour deep fried crullers
We had to order Josh’s favorite dish, shredded pork in garlic sauce. It had a good amount of spice and lots of fresh ginger mixed in. I was only slightly turned off by the weirdly soft texture of the pork, but that was something I would have to learn to deal with over the course of the next week.
Shredded pork in garlic sauce
I was excited to have the marinated duck, since I’ve always found poultry to be better in Asia. This was a bit disappointing because the duck was quite small, and the skin was not rendered and super fatty. Flavor-wise it was good though, with lots of duck flavor shining through.
Marinated duck
The mapo tofu we ordered was SUPER spicy and burned my mouth so much that not even plain rice or beer could calm it down. You can just see how much bright red oil is coming off the dish, though Josh really enjoyed it. I like a little spice, but not when my mouth goes totally numb. The chunks of tofu were good though, a bit firm but still quite silky.
Super spicy mapo tofu
From the snack section of the menu, we ordered baked buns with sesame. They were nicely browned on the outside with a lot of sesame sprinkled on, and the inside was filled with pork.
Baked pork buns with sesame
The bun part was a bit thick, but the pork inside was pretty tasty.
Porky innards
For dessert, we had fried sesame balls with black sesame paste filling. I’ve had similar balls in Chinatown but they’re usually filled with red bean paste. These were also significantly larger than the ones in Chinatown, practically the size of softballs. We asked our waitress to cut them in half so they would be more manageable.
Fried sesame balls filled with black sesame paste
Overall we thought the food at Fei Teng Yu Xiang was quite good. Everything was well seasoned and there was lots of spice involved, as it is a Sichuan restaurant. We weren’t in the mood for seafood but I’ve read that it’s their specialty, so maybe we missed out but I still liked what we had. We definitely ordered way too much food for the four of us but the meal was super cheap – less than US$25 TOTAL, including the beers we had. It’s hard to beat that!
Fei Teng Yu Xiang
Beijing, China